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The Sea is His
Psalm 95:5
We’re continuing to talk about the Venite, that Psalm 95 song that’s often sung in the mornings, that perfect morning hymn as we get ready to go about our work day. I want to read the next verse in Psalm 95. This is verse five.
The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. (Psalm 95:5)
This is again emphasizing the work of the Father’s hands. As we prepare for our work going about our day, we look at our God’s hands that formed the earth. When we think of how God created Adam, we think of the sculptor who’s so intimately and delicately forming the clay to build a human being in his own image, in order to accomplish the work that he has for him, and to receive the blessings that he wants to bestow upon him. But God is not just a sculptor, he’s a landscape painter. He built the whole earth. All the dry ground was formed by him. You can picture him lifting it up out of the sea. Of course he accomplished all of this by his word. So the hands are a metaphor here, but his hands hold the earth. Form it, shape it. When you see a beautiful landscape that was designed by the painter, God, and not just the dry land, but the sea also is his.
There’s an old school of thought about the sea and the land. The land is stable. The land is where you can rest secure. You know you’re safe when you’re on dry land. The sea, however, is chaotic, especially if you’ve ever been caught in a wave in the ocean and totally subsumed by it. There’s a moment while you’re tumbling through the water where you don’t know which way is up. Direction makes no sense. Space makes no sense. Time makes no sense. The sea is chaos. That’s a picture that we have in Genesis two that when God created the world, it was formless and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters and then created a perfect, beautiful order out of it. So we can start to think of the sea as something evil. But it’s not. It also belongs to God. It is the good thing out of which he has brought his creation.
Think of a painter using the pools of paint and splattering them around, mixing them around. It looks like a mess, but what a good thing that is to create beauty out of and the sea that our God owns. He commands as well. And we can see when Jesus was on the boat with his disciples numerous times how he calmed the stormy seas, it obeyed him. The disciples asked, who is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him? This is none other than God. God owns the sea. He owns the sea of troubles that come against you, also. He owns your entire environment so that when you feel lost and alone, so that you don’t know which direction is up or where you’re headed, God has this in control. He formed the dry land, and the sea also is his, and you are his. And he has redeemed you through the waters of baptism and adopted you as his child to give you peace and life everlasting.
